by There just isn’t a whole heap of news at the moment. Timișoara is balmy for the second half of February; the kids are disappointed we’ve had a virtually snowless winter, though I wouldn’t entirely discount an appearance of the white stuff in March.
I had my fourth lesson with the ten-year-old boy who continues to impress me. He knows the English alphabet upside down and backwards; most adults have a tough time with their G and J and E and I and W and Y but he managed just fine. His grandmother lives there, in their typically Romanian apartment, and I’m always amazed by her hair. Midway through the lesson she handed me a big bowl of frișcă, or whipped cream, topped with a kind of purée made from chestnuts. I’m not used to eating something that sweet in the middle of the day, and I only got through about half of it.
One of four lessons yesterday was with a guy who doesn’t lack confidence when it comes to speaking – for a lot of people that’s more than half the battle – but he’s still speaking Romanian with English words. I went through some exercises with the goal of getting him away from word-for-word translation, but they were rather tough for him.
This morning I had one of my rare half-and-half English and Romanian sessions at the university. In our previous session the teacher gave me a signed copy of her mother’s recently published children’s fantasy book about a dragon-like creature and a kite. The Romanian word for both of those things is the same – zmeu – hence it was a kind of play on words. It was a lovely story. I learnt that her mother is something of a celebrity in her home town of Alba Iulia. I meant to discuss my book idea with her, but we ran out of time. I did send her a message though and who knows, maybe I can start to get the ball rolling.
Dad’s sister seemed to have blocked his phone, and he thought she’d deliberately severed all lines of communication with him for good. But then on Sunday, out of the blue, she called him. She might be selfish and frustrating, but it turns out she isn’t actually an ogre.
